Carmelite Church (Famagusta)
The Carmelite Church is the ruin of a Carmelite monastery church in Famagusta on Cyprus . The church was dedicated to Our Lady on Mount Carmel .
history
It is not clear when the Carmelites settled in Famagusta under the rule of the Frankish house of Lusignan . The convent and its church are occasionally mentioned in sources . During the Christmas week of 1365, the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople , St. Peter Thomas OCarm , in the monastery. Despite warnings to protect his health, he walked barefoot from the Carmelite monastery to the Cathedral of St. Nikolaus , where he should read the Christmas mass. In January 1366 he succumbed to illness and was buried in the choir of the monastery church. In 1473 the last Queen of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro , rode on horseback in a procession to the Church of Our Lady on Mount Carmel to attend Mass.
The art historian Camille Enlart suspects that the Carmelite Church was built around the time when Patriarch Peter Thomas lived there, i.e. in the second half of the 14th century. Enlart assigns them to models of southern French Gothic . The Church of Our Lady on Mount Carmel consisted of a simple three-bay nave to which a shorter choir bay was added, which closed on three sides. The second yoke had side chapels in the style of a transept that were added later. The choir vault is still there, while those of the nave and chapels have collapsed. The church was richly decorated, some of which Enlart was able to document. Only small remnants of this have survived.
The church has been in ruins since the Ottoman artillery bombardment in the course of the siege of Famagusta in 1571 and the subsequent conquest of the city.
literature
- Camille Enlart (translated by David Hunt): Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus . Paris 1899 / London 1987, pp. 267-274.
Web links
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 35 ° 7 ′ 37.8 ″ N , 33 ° 56 ′ 11.5 ″ E